1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a wireless communication device, a wireless communication method, a control device, and a control method by which a wireless terminal conducts handover.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, millimeter wave communication, which does not require a license and which uses wireless signals in the 60 GHz band enabling high-speed communication, has been a subject of attention.
Wireless local area network (LAN) and personal area network (PAN) standards implementing millimeter wave communication include, for example, Wireless Gigabit (WiGig), IEEE 802.15.3c, Wireless High Definition (HD), ECMA-387, and IEEE 802.11ad.
Wireless signals in the millimeter-wave band have the radio wave characteristics of strong linearity and large spatial attenuation. For this reason, much millimeter wave communication, including the above standards, use beamforming technology to control the directionality of the wireless signal by using multiple antennas.
Beamforming technology controls the direction and width of a beam, which is a communication area having directionality, and cause the beam to track the position of the wireless terminal acting as the communication peer. In addition, if multiple wireless terminals exist in a range where a beam may be formed, a millimeter wave communication device using beamforming technology enables multiple wireless terminals to connect by changing the beam direction according to time division.
As a communication system using wireless communication, there is known a system in which a wireless terminal makes a wireless connection to a wireless access point connected to a communication network, for example. In such a communication system, if the wireless terminals goes outside the communication area of the wireless access point, a break in the connection is avoided by switching the connection target to another wireless access point (see Japanese Patent No. 5305453, for example).